net.art research

net.art 2.0

Just sped through the publication net.art 2.0 (image above) by Tilman Baumgärtel which comprises primarily of interviews with net.artists or artists whose use of networks is of critical importance to their work. It’s a good read, although a little dated (five years old) it stands up well and holds back from covering the usual suspects of net.art. Although you will find Jodi in there and they are in the original publication net.art (only published in German as far as I can tell) (image above) which is a shame, as all it seems to do is provide an update on their works development (however the author does seems to have a particular interest in them as net.artists).

The publication gives some background concerning artists who contributed to artforms which may have contributed to an environment allowing net.art to develop. This does primarily focus on video art / broadcast art and other audio visual forms which emerged from the 60’s onwards and Baumgärtel, while predictably, mentions and interviews artists such as Nam June Paik and Douglas Davis highlights workhowever by Davis which you won’t find much documentation of elsewhere and rapidly moves on to draw interesting correlations between the work of Julia Scher and Peter Halley with net.art.

The publication then moves swiftly into interviewing net.artists or artists whose use of networks is of critical importance to their work in one way or another and towards the end of the publication attempts to move beyond the conception that the internet, the world wide web in particular, is the only form of network net.artists are concerned with. As Baumgärtel explains in the foreword, his interpretation of net.art is not limited to the historical ascii or form based works we all have read about time and time again:

‘Net art,’ as I see the term, reaches above and beyond artistic projects that focus on the internet…Artists had already conducted artistic experiments with other telecommunications networks. This is why I would also classify works which have dealt with other networks - technical or social - as ‘Net art’

This is what makes the publication strong in the current climate of networked arts. Here we have artists explaining how networks play a part in their work as a, research tool, environment, means of distribution, forum for activism, philosophical standpoint, technical enabler and so much more. While ocassionally this does not come accross as well as it should with some of the artists interviewed (the trouble with the format of interviews more than anything else) who need to be directly asked how do networks form a role in their work, other artists such as James Stevens, Lisa Jevbratt etc. do not require any such explicit questioning or obvious explanation.

posted by Lee Mills @ 7:34 pm